{"id":725,"date":"2024-12-16T19:47:51","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T19:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/?p=725"},"modified":"2024-12-16T19:49:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T19:49:37","slug":"93-miles-1-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/?p=725","title":{"rendered":"93 Miles 1 Gear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

UnBound XL T Minus 166 Days<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it\u2019s doing the Festive 500 in under 40 hours or riding 160 miles to visit every Taco Time in Western Washington, I think it\u2019s important to keep cycling interesting by dreaming up and doing challenging stuff.  It was in this spirit \u2013 doing pointless challenging stuff – that I decided to ride a century on my singlespeed cyclocross bike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My singlespeed is a sweet Squid Squidcross V5 that I built up this past fall with the hopes of riding some of the cyclocross events that I help promote.  I really wanted to ride the courses that I help design and construct order to see how I did and how I can improve.  I managed to ride the final two events of the season, and despite riding against guys with gears I didn\u2019t feel that I was at a significant disadvantage with a single gear.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Mr. Squid in MFG Cyclocross Livery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After cross season I switched out the Grifos for a set of Schwalbe G-Ones and took to the road.  I went with the G-Ones as I wanted to preserve some wet gravel capability but in hindsight, I probably should have just gone with some smooth Rene Herse fatties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I rode the Squid on some short 15-30 mile rides, then on a metric century, and then I figured why not do a century.  The December weather here in Seattle hasn\u2019t been all that wet but it has been super cold \u2013 not sunny dry cold, but damp bone-chilling cold, but yesterday the weather didn\u2019t look too bad: a chance of a tiny peak at the sun and high forties, good enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I enjoy riding at night, I find it peaceful, but my wife hates me being out after dark, so I try to end my rides before full nightfall, but that can be tough during these dark days of December.  At this time of the year you\u2019ll need to be taking off the sunglasses by three thirty and it\u2019ll be full headlight mode at four thirty.  I wanted to get our early in order to avoid night riding but I ended up glued to the Elite Women\u2019s race at Namur.  Wheels didn\u2019t get rolling until about 10:00 AM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riding the singlespeed is chill, you really can only go so fast, so just relax and enjoy the ride.  I didn\u2019t really have a route pre-planned, but I knew that I wanted to keep it as flat as possible so I started by riding up the western shore of Lake Washington.  The first challenge came at mile 30 \u2013 the hill out of Woodinville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m running a 34\/17 with 172.5 cranks which gives me about 55 gear inches.  Compare that to 22 for my road bike which bottoms out at 34\/42.  The climb was a grind and a bit dicey as as storm debris on the shoulder continually forced me onto the road.  That\u2019s a four-lane low traffic road; I\u2019m kind of mystified why drivers can\u2019t seem to merge into the left lane to give a struggling cyclist a few feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the top of the hill, I turned north and took my chances riding through the Paradise Valley \u2013 not a cycling paradise for sure.  From there it was down Mink Road and a pit stop at the Redmond Starbucks.  After a short coffee and a scone, I was back on the road, this time along the eastern shore of Lake Sammamish.  As I came into Issaquah I realized that I was going to come up short on mileage, one solution was to go south around the bottom of Lake Washington, but I wasn\u2019t stoked on doing that in the dark, so I turned north up West Lake Sammamish Pkwy.  Anyone who rides a bicycle in Western Washington knows that you\u2019d have to be an idiot to ride a bike northbound on West Lake Sammamish Pkwy.  For the next six miles I was a nervous idiot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now came the second big climb of the day.  My knees were starting to feel the strain, and for the first time I started to think, \u201chmmm maybe this isn\u2019t such a great idea.\u201d  Oh well carry on, what you gonna do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cut through the Microsoft campus, hit the 520 trail, crossed the bridge to Seattle and from there I was in the home stretch.  I had done fairly well on my nutrition but by the time I climbed the hill up from Leschi I was running on fumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I rolled down East Mercer way in darkness and when I reached my house the odometer read 93 miles.  The best way to log those last seven miles would have been to turn around, ride three and a half up East Mercer Way then back down the same road.  That was a tough sell, so I decided to call it there.  I turned down my road, parked my bike and went inside to warm up my feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Squid rolls nicely and it\u2019s super fun to ride, but in hindsight I think it\u2019s just a bit too hilly around here to really enjoy a long ride on a singlespeed.  I wonder if I should put some gears on it and use it for Unbound. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UnBound XL T Minus 166 Days Whether it\u2019s doing the Festive 500 in under 40 hours or riding 160 miles to visit every Taco Time in Western Washington, I think it\u2019s important to keep cycling interesting by dreaming up and doing challenging stuff.  It was in this spirit \u2013 doing pointless challenging stuff – that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":728,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gravel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":727,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}